A recurrent theme in the cartoon Zits is the replication of gender stereotypes saying that girls are chatty, boys are laconic. Postings on the subject (using Zits in particular) go back at least as far as Mark Liberman’s Language Log posting of 4/26/05 (“Language and gender: The cartoon version”); meanwhile, Mark has been attacking the stereotypes directly with data. But Zits rolls on; here’s today’s strip:
A dense block of wordage is a Zits convention for indicating overwhelming amounts of speech.
